Friends and the World of Nature

by Theodor Benfey

Overview

What I have written in these pages is addressed especially to those who like myself feel distressed that science is still generally seen as mechanistic, atomistic, particulate, without deeper meaning. What is needed, I increasingly feel, is a new way of looking at nature, releasing the energies of those who in fact do look at nature in non-"orthodox" ways but are shackled by the fear that they may be wrong and that few believe as they do. What follows is in the form of a meditation on our manifold relations to nature.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940158700798
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	06/28/2017
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #233
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	97 KB

About the Author

Ted Benfey belongs to Friendship Meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he teaches chemistry and history of science at Guilford College. Born in Germany, he joined Friends while a student at University College, London, and on coming to this country taught at the Quaker institutions of Haverford and Earlham. He has served as president of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (founded at Haverford), and for fifteen years edited the American Chemical Society’s magazine, Chemistry. A year in Japan with his artist wife Rachel Thomas Benfey and two of their three sons, allowed him to explore the history of oriental science.

“The rift between man and nature,” he writes, “became abruptly clear to me the day I heard of the bombing of Hiroshima. I almost gave up plans for a scientific career at that time. This pamphlet arose during a sabbatical period spent at Woodbrooke College in England where I sought for Quaker insights that would allow men and women of our time to break through to a more harmonious communion with nature, our environment, the scientific community, and the world of industrial production.”